Some cable systems can override frustrating weather warnings

Comcast Cable systems automatically interrupt all programming and switch to the Emergency Alert System channel. The company can override the interruption only on analog channels and by written agreement with a station. (The Associated Press/FIle photo)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - With tornadoes and damaging winds bearing down on North Alabama on April 27, many residents watching live coverage on local television stations repeatedly heard a blaring tone and watched the screen go black.

Up-to-the-moment radar coverage of dangerous storms was interrupted by a 90-second-or-so warning that was either not as important as what they were watching or was a warning that the station's meteorologist had announced minutes earlier.

The interruptions frustrate television station officials and residents. But a cable company can prevent those warnings from taking over the screen if the company has the proper equipment and a written agreement with the television station.

In Huntsville, Knology cable has the technology to override the warning, but Comcast Cable does not. "If they're showing live radar, we don't interrupt their broadcast," said Mike Adams, general manager of Knology in Huntsville.

Comcast Cable can provide the override only on certain nondigital technologies, said Patricia Collins, Comcast's area senior director for government affairs.

WHNT has received "a lot of calls" about weather warnings that interrupt live weather broadcasts, said Stan Pylant, the station's president and general manager.

"It's bad enough that they take over the screen with a tornado warning, but it's every time there's a flood watch or warning or a severe thunderstorm watch or warning," Pylant said.

Basic channels on Knology are not affected by the warning if the customer has a digital converter box or digital television, Pylant said. "They don't take over the screen," he said.

Knology can do that because it has more advanced equipment than Comcast, Pylant said. Comcast is not capable of selectively preventing the Emergency Alert System from taking over the screen for customers with a digital converter box, he said.

The only Comcast customers who don't have the entire screen taken over by a warning are those with a digital television with a direct connection with the cable coming out of the wall and no converter box, Pylant said.

Adams at Knology said the warnings Knology receives are automatically passed on to customers' screens. "It's nothing we do manually," he said.

But Knology and all of the Huntsville television stations have a written agreement, or waiver, allowed by the Federal Communications Commission, not to interrupt the stations' live broadcast with a National Weather Service warning, Adams said. "That's a service we can provide," Adams said.

The waiver is for analog channels only, said Randy Grayson, network manager for Knology in Huntsville. On high-definition and digital channels, the warning is relayed by a banner that scrolls across the top of the screen, Grayson said.

Comcast's Collins said Comcast Cable systems "automatically interrupt all programming, force-tune the customer to the (Emergency Alert System) messaging channel, and relay the message as received."

Comcast can provide only "selective override" of warnings by written agreement with a station and if technically possible. She said Comcast can provide selective override only on certain "nondigital technologies."

The alerts begin with the National Weather Service. The federal meteorologists issue warnings for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and floods, but have no control over the television broadcast, said Brian Burgess, an electronics systems analyst at the service's Huntsville office.

The agency then transmits the warning over the Emergency Alert System and weather radio and by text to emergency managers and first responders, he said. The state Emergency Alert System picks up the warning and sends it to local radio and television stations, he said.

Chris Reed, an emergency communications officer with the Huntsville-Madison County Emergency Management Agency, said the EMA transmits a set of tones that activates a warning. The warning automatically goes on the screen for about 90 seconds if no one is at the cable company in the middle of the night to override the activation message in the tones, he said.

"We have the power to initiate those, but we have no control over what's on the screen," Reed said. Reed added that the full-screen warnings are helpful in smaller areas where television stations don't have the resources that Huntsville stations do and for the hearing impaired.

"A scroll would not get your attention like a whole screen would," he said.